A blog about startups

Joining YC

I’m excited to share the news that I’ve joined Y Combinator as a partner.

YC has done more than anyone else to get people to start companies. If not for YC and for Paul Graham’s eloquent writing about startups, I would never have gone down this path in life. The same is true for probably thousands of other people. Many of the products you use every day would not exist.

I was talking to a company earlier this week that was unsure about applying to YC. I told them to talk to any, any YC founder and ask them if it was worth it. I gave them a list of 20 names at random. I didn’t need to pick, because for virtually 100% of people who go through YC, it becomes the defining moment of their career. Paul Graham says that you are better off having a product that a few people love a lot, than a lot of people like a little. If YC is a product, he’s followed his own advice.

You can tell a lot about an organization by the people it hires, and YC is hiring the best people in the world. In the last year, we’ve added Peter Thiel, Anne Wojcicki (23&me), Ben Silberman (Pinterest), and Joe Gebbia (Airbnb) as part-time partners to an already outstanding team. I’m humbled to get to work with these people.

Most VC firms encourage innovation by investing, but they don’t tend to innovate much on their own business. YC acts like a startup. We are making big, bold bets: launching a research lab, a new venture funding model, and a new program that could someday be bigger than YC itself. Sam has a vision for putting YC at the center of all kinds of innovation, and you can see it emerging piece by piece. Much like when I read PG’s essays a decade ago, it’s inspired me all over again to believe in the power of a small group of individuals to create the future.